Barcelona has launched its first Anti-Racist Plan 2026–2036, a ten-year roadmap that places the fight against racism at the centre of the city’s human rights and non-discrimination agenda. Presented during Fòrum Barcelona 2026: Cities leading for racial justice, the plan is conceived as a structural, cross-cutting and long-term instrument to promote real equality in rights, opportunities and recognition for all people.
With an estimated budget of 3.5 million euros, the plan brings together six strategic areas, 23 measures and more than 100 actions. It addresses areas where racism has a direct impact on people’s daily lives, including housing, education, health, participation, public services, coexistence and access to justice.
A key contribution of the plan is its recognition of racism not only as a matter of individual prejudice, but also as a structural and institutional reality. This approach requires public institutions to examine how procedures, services, data gaps, urban policies and public narratives may reproduce inequalities. In response, Barcelona commits to reviewing municipal practices, strengthening anti-racist training for public staff, promoting diversity within the administration and incorporating anti-racist criteria into public procurement, subsidies and policy design.
The plan also introduces important mechanisms for monitoring and accountability. These include the creation of a Barcelona Anti-Racist Observatory, which will analyse the implementation of the plan, produce studies and indicators, and contribute to identifying discriminatory structures and narratives. The plan also foresees improvements in data collection, including ethnic and racial self-identification categories developed from a human rights perspective, in order to better understand how racism affects different communities.
Civil society participation is another central element. As a matter of fact, through the Anti-Racist Advisory Council, Barcelona seeks to ensure that public policies are informed by the knowledge, experience and demands of rights defenders, anti-racist organisations and communities directly affected by racism. This participatory dimension will be essential to ensure that the plan moves beyond institutional commitments and generates concrete changes in public action and everyday life.
The international dimension of the plan is also significant. As vice-president of ECCAR and a member of the UNESCO Global Alliance against Racism and Discrimination, Barcelona aims to share its experience with other cities and contribute to stronger local responses to racism at the European and global levels. This reflects the growing role of cities as key actors in the protection of human rights, equality and democratic coexistence.
For UCLG-CISDP, this initiative is particularly relevant. Barcelona is a long-standing partner and contributor to the Committee’s work, and its new Anti-Racist Plan illustrates how local governments can translate human rights commitments into concrete frameworks for action, monitoring and accountability.
The success of the plan will now depend on its implementation. Its ambition lies not only in the number of measures it contains, but in its capacity to transform institutional practices, address unequal access to rights and maintain the meaningful participation of affected communities throughout the process. In this sense, Barcelona’s Anti-Racist Plan represents both a political commitment and a test of local democracy: whether cities can confront racism as a structural issue and make equality effective in everyday urban life.